A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2008 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

A quantum jump is when a particle jumps rather than move continuously from one position to another position of differing energy. A quantum jump refers to a phenomenon such as when an electron absorbs a certain amount of energy it jumps from one orbit in an atom to a higher orbit. Or, when the electron emits a certain amount of energy it drops from a higher orbit in a atom to a lower orbit.

A quantum jump between different types of organizations is probably best be described through an example. If you happen upon a rock with an ant colony beneath it and flip the rock over, you will see the ants all scatter in different directions. The moment after the rock is flipped, there appears to be total confusion in the colony. It can be said the ant colony experiences total confusion when its nest is disrupted. Of course, it will be admitted that at the perspective of the ant at the ant level, the response of the colony my be perfectly organized. But, that perspective is not available to us to know if the colony’s response is organized. From the level of looking down on the colony it appears in confusion and disorganization and the colony moves from organization to disorganization.

Now, suppose when the rock is flipped, one sees all the ants move in a organized fashion. That is, each ant know exactly where to go in the event of the rock being flipped and each follows a path so as to not disrupt the path of another. The movement of the ants form the organized colony before the rock is flipped to a different type of organizational response when the rock is flipped could be described and called a quantum jump between different types of organizations. That is, the conditions for which the first organization functions are removed and a new organization appears rather than disfunction and disorganization.

Creating a responsive organization or an improvisational organization is to create a structure that allows for a quantum jump between different types of organizations when the need arises. The example of the Northeast Blackout of 2003 provided in the discussion "Creating a responsive and/or an improvisational organization" is such an quantum jump. In this regard, any properly structured emergency response that allows for the continued function of an organization even when the normal conditions are totally disrupted would be to create a quantum jump between differing organizations. The response of an emergency response organization to an emergency would not be creating a quantum jump. The continued operation of an organization when it should be totally disrupted if not totally disorganized as a result of some occurrence would be a quantum jump between differing organizations.

What is most interesting is it is possible to create a cadre of workers who can make such quantum leaps. The key to creating such organizational quantum jumps is knowing how to reorchestrate the pieces when the original orchestration is disrupted for whatever reason. But to reorchestrate the pieces, one needs to know how and why they were orchestrated originally.

Related topics
Orchestrating the Organization

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